The safe operation of boilers - who's responsible?

BOAS Assessors - The Key to our Success

Bringing a Steam Boiler On-Line from Cold

Brexit and The Machinery Directive - 'Game of Change'

Warren Spiers, Managing Director at Spiers Engineering Safety, looks at the possible changes that may come, following our exit from the EU.

Synopsis:

The machine safety industry should be watching the Brexit process with baited breath. Nobody truly knows what the outcome will be. In fact, all we know is that our relationship with the EU will never be the same again and in this 'game of change' nobody knows the outcomes for sure. The purpose of this article is to explore the changes that could occur to the Machinery Directive and the machinery safety industry.

As a professional in machine safety and as a machine safety consultancy business owner responsible for the livelihood not just of my own family, but also of the families of our employees, I am keenly focussed on what contingencies I might want to put in place to protect us all from the effects of the Brexit process.

Energy Losses - Flue Gas Losses

The fact is the number one area of energy loss is the stack. Flue gases leaving the chimney above ambient temperature waste huge amounts of energy. You don’t have to try hard to get a feeling for the scale of problem facing the user.

In every household there’s a hair dryer, usually rated at around 1.5 kW, producing a warm gentle breeze which adds up to 12,000kWh when run for 8,000hrs. This is miniscule when compared to the hot exhaust gases being discharged from the average industrial chimney. In comparison, the hair dryer hardly produces sufficient output to scare off a cabbage white butterfly from your prize runner beans!

Anyone standing near the top of a stack, or even at ground level, when the plant is operational, cannot fail to appreciate just how much energy is contained in the huge volume of hot air racing through the flue and into the atmosphere, thus costing the operator a small fortune.

Flue gases are a fact of life and the reasons for excessive temperatures are varied but much of the heat contained within them can be harnessed by a variety of different methods.

These will be dealt with in later bulletins but suffice to say there are enormous savings to be made in this area.

Quick Step Boilerhouse Efficiency Guide

Go greener and boost the efficiency of your boilerhouse with Spirax Sarco’s new quick step guide

In the current economic and political environment, businesses are under increasing pressure to save on fuel costs and reduce their carbon footprint. Spirax Sarco has launched a new guide that will show you how to increase efficiency and productivity whilst raising your company’s environmental profile.

In this guide, author and boilerhouse specialist Chris Coleman talks about five key measures which can help you lower energy consumption, reduce maintenance and carbon emissions, promote cleaner steam and ultimately lower your bottom line.

Learn the benefits of the magic five:

Reverse osmosis

TDS controls

Flash steam recovery

Exhaust gas heat recovery

Steam conditioning

Click Here to learn more about how these five key measures can help you save money and help the environment.

Benefits of CEA membership - CEA Endorsement

A retired industrial Engineer who is now working as a competent person inspecting Heritage Steam Plant and equipment.

I have found individual membership beneficial to myself along with BOAS accreditation. BOAS accreditation was an important part of professionally proving my competence to operate and look after steam plant. I found that maintaining membership was useful in assisting to keep me up to date with changes as they happened around the steam industry.

The Combustion Engineering Association Conference and workshop programme allows you to absorb legislation and your responsibilities with a group of likeminded people and together improve your knowledge and understanding of the subject. All the speakers know their subject and you get the chance to interact with them and get advice in plain English. The sessions are practicable and relevant with a chance to interact with others operating steam equipment where you can also share your experiences.

Membership also gives you the chance to get involved with the C.E.A. and help to make a difference. Their work on the Boiler Operator Accreditation, Boiler Feed Water (BG04) and Industrial Gas Accreditation Scheme (I-GAS) which needed members to get together and write and set up the system and documents. This needs input from experts in their respective fields as well as some input from the intended recipients. If we put nothing in ourselves to CEA we will get nothing out, so attending and taking part will help you, others and the C.E.A.

Industrial Gas Accreditation Scheme I-GAS

People in factories often think they are exempt from the ‘Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998’ (GSIUR) but they are wrong, the paragraph in blue is key to helping people understand compliance with the regulations.

Guidance to Regulation 3 of the GSIUR states:

“Gas work for those working at premises that fall outside the scope of the Regulations should only be undertaken by a person who has successfully completed an appropriate full training course followed by an assessment of competence”.

The CEA’s Industrial Gas Operations Accreditation Scheme (I-GAS) was officially launched in March 2017 and has been created to fill this gap, it was created in collaboration with industrial gas training providers/centers, manufacturers of combustion equipment, and employers.

It is the only formal training and accreditation scheme currently available that is specifically designed for maintenance staff and technicians working with gas in industrial premises.

A call was taken via Watkins Hire’s 24/7 Emergency Hotline regarding the urgent need for assistance due to the failure of an existing boiler at a prestigious residential block of 134 apartments in London

A management company required a temporary boiler installation to assist during the planned replacement of existing site boilers for a block of 330 luxury apartments and swimming pool in the centre of London

Lay up procedure - Byworth Boilers

CHRISTMAS LAYUP PROCEDURE FOR YOUR BOILERS

With many businesses closing for Christmas, Byworth’s Chief Technician, David Tilleard, discusses how to prepare a boiler for short term storage. David reports: “A boiler left idle for an extended period of time is likely to suffer corrosion as the normally low levels of oxygen scavenger are depleted. Any boiler that’s going to be left for a few days should be ‘laid up’.”

Emerson patented combustion solution

Take a look at this video which was the subject of the CEA's David Gunn Memorial Lecture, 19th October 2017, delivered in the House of Lords by Chip Rennie - Director, Global Industrial Energy Solutions. Whilst explaining "The "Art" of Combustion - Then and Now" Chip talked about the previous technologies of controlling fuel and air ratios and then discussed the modern way of controlling this air fuel mix and a new algorithm for controlling it, all of which is in the attached video just released by Emerson Process Management.

The CEA's Honorary President Dr Pete Waterman said "the presentation was extremely informative and has answered some very important questions for [him] and [his] guest Matt Conway, on recent developments in combustion technology". It was also very informative for many of the guests attending. For those that may not know, Pete Waterman has and still is very heavily involved in many aspects of Engineering from Heritage Railways rebuilding and renovation of steam locos through to the design, build and infrastructure for HS2 and all aspects of Engineering in-between, and it goes without saying, his passion for music.

The safe operation of boilers - who's responsible?

If you are reading this, then the likelihood is you're an engineer with responsibility of the boiler plant in your organisation. Now that could be a factory, a hospital, a chemical plant, a prison or in fact anywhere with a boiler.

So, is the boiler plant your responsibility? Yes; you say, it is my responsibility.

The fact is, the over-riding responsibility for the safe operation of the boilers within your organisation sits with the head of your organisation. It may be the MD or the CEO or some other such title but for this exercise we will call him/her the MD. The chances are, they're not from an engineering background and possibly don't even know where the boilerhouse is, but they cannot get away from it, in law, they are responsible.

BOAS Assessors - The Key to our Success

Could you be part of the team?

The Boiler Operation Accreditation Scheme has been running for over 12 years now and is in a significantly enhanced and ‘steady state’ of operation after seeing over 3330 successful candidates pass through the scheme up to September 2017.

But what makes a successful training and assessment scheme? One answer in the case of BOAS is the Assessors.

There is no such thing as a typical BOAS Assessor. Sure, they all have a wealth of experience in the operation of steam and hot water boilers, and they have all been associated with the boiler industry in some way for most of their working lives, but they are all different characters and all highly professional individuals. Some have an engineering consultancy background, some come from the H&S world, and some have spent many years operating plant at sea and on shore, but they all know their boilers.

Many of the dozen or so Assessors are retired, a few still have a full time role, and some are also BOAS Trainers; there is nothing wrong with being a BOAS Trainer and an Assessor as long as you do not assess the candidates you have trained. Working in the BOAS scheme is a form of CPD for all those involved – we all learn something new every day from the candidates and the other professionals in the CEA involved in the scheme.

BOAS Assessors love to talk about steam and love to share experiences with their colleagues. They take on the challenge of keeping up-to-date with their industry whilst encouraging the candidates they assess to know more about the plants they operate and increase their own knowledge. A BOAS Assessment is a structured and quite rigorous process, but Assessors come away from their candidate interviews with the satisfaction of seeing good boilermen becoming safer and better boiler operators, and their managers and supervisors knowing more about their roles and the laws and best practices that underpin the industry.

Boiler explosions and related dangerous occurrences are rare in this country, and this is no accident. Trained boiler operators and managers are now required to have BOAS by some employers, and insurance inspectors are looking for trained operatives when they inspect plant – it is a legal requirement to be trained for work activities, after all.

The CEA awarded Kiwa the task of managing the BOAS assessment process and organising the Assessors. They are always on the lookout for new Assessors to join the team. A steady increase in the numbers being trained, plus the addition of a new category of operator and the continual five yearly renewals mean that the BOAS scheme is going from strength to strength. Do you think you could join in with our success?

Bringing a Steam Boiler On-Line from Cold

To help understand what needs to be done and why things need to be done in a certain way, the following procedure presumes that the boiler is completely cold and dry, such as after a prolonged shutdown or annual inspection.

Steps can be omitted for boilers with some residual heat still in them and a typical example of this could be the start up after a weekend shutdown where the boiler has dropped in pressure and cooled, yet still has heat in it.

Note: The need to heat the boiler slowly will be explained throughout this procedure and it can take many hours for a large cold boiler to be heated correctly to operating temperature and pressure. Timing will also depend on how much treated water is available to fill the boiler, so be prepared for a long day and you may have to include a shift handover procedure to safely complete the task.